The Power of the Pause

When faced with an important professional interaction, people tend to put a lot of thought into what they are going to say. While choosing your words wisely is certainly important, the way in which we speak is equally important. Our tone of voice, rate of speech, and other non-verbal cues often say more about our message than our words themselves. One extremely powerful, but often overlooked communication tool is the pause.

When people are nervous, overexcited, or speaking about something they feel passionate about, they often speak more quickly than usual. This often causes the speaker to lose much of the vocal variety that makes speech powerful and interesting to the listener. Inserting a well-timed pause can help to restore a natural flow, and give more power to your speech.

However, it’s not just enough to pause; you want to make sure you’re pausing in the most powerful places possible. Usually this is either right before or after an important point to which you want to draw your listener’s attention. Pausing before an important point allows the listener to fully focus and builds anticipation. Pausing immediately after you make an important point allows your listener to absorb the information and react to it. When properly used, silence can be worth a thousand words.

To better understand the power of the pause, check out our video below!

Want to learn how to turn your speech into your most powerful business tool? Give us a call at 917-841-2965 or visit our website at www.corporatespeechsolutions.com and find out how one of our trained and certified corporate speech-language pathologists can improve your communication and your career! Don’t live in NYC? No problem! Our services are Skype ready.

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